Editor's Note - This is an excerpt from the August 2006 issue of the Buddhist Wheel
Her husband, a fisherman as his father was before, had perished in a sea storm, leaving her with their two sons. Then during the great war, the Imperial government’s conscription took her son along with many other men into a war that ultimately overtook this small village along the Japan coastline. Her first son served on a gunship. Each day, she walked to the water’s edge and prayed to her husband and her ancestors (kami), for her son’s safe return and a speedy end to the war. The day she received word that all the brave men aboard her son’s ship had perished, sacrificing their lives for their emperor and country was the only day she couldn’t go to the shore.
Upon receiving word of her son’s sacrifice, she felt life’s cruelty was unsurmountable. Her only reason to live was her youngest son. She continued her ritual at day’s end, placing a flower on the sea, praying to someday join her husband and family. While asleep, she dreamt of her men returning home after fishing. Tired but grateful to prepare part of the catch with the evening meal of miso-shiru, boiled rice, and pickled vegetables, she was, after all, a wife and mother of a fisherman.
Daily, at the water’s edge, she poured her sadness and prayers into the sea which gave and took life. During the Obon season, she set out burning candles in lanterns on the water—written Buddhist prayers—for her husband and son’s safe journey to the lotus world of peace.
A typical narrative of mothers and families throughout human history who endure the horrible pain and ravages of war, it does not differ from that of the many mothers, families and people experiencing both in America, Iraq, and other war-torn areas today.
June 23rd marks the 61st annual memorial, known as “Day of Consoling Spirits,” (Irei-no-Hi), Okinawa’s Memorial Day for all who perished in the only ground battle between Japan and the Allies, honoring the approximately 250,000 casualties in which almost one-third of the Okinawan population perished.
While this annual Okinawan holiday is not observed in Japan, on the southern tip of Okinawa’s main island at the Peace Memorial Park in Mabuni Itoman, a unique memorial honors all war dead: soldiers and civilians, Okinawans, Japanese, Americans, British, POWs, and conscripted Koreans and Chinese laborers. Its significance is not to dwell on victimization, but to reflect on the absurdity and inhumanity of war.
The Allied decision to use nuclear bombs was based on the Battle of Okinawa. Japanese resistance was so fierce, and losses so high, that the U.S. feared the worse for its invasion of the main Japanese islands. The horrors of the Battle of Okinawa were ultimately overshadowed by the first atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 8, and days later, the second on Nagasaki.
In 2011, the Hongwanji will observe Shinran Shonin’s 750th Memorial. The slogan selected contain Shinran’s own words, for he lived during a period of extreme historical unrest and social upheaval: MAY PEACE AND TRANQUILITY PREVAIL IN THE WORLD (YONO NAKA ANNON NARE). It was Shinran’s deep wish that the Buddha-dharma of Other-Power Nembutsu spread peace and tranquility throughout a world in constant confusion and conflict.
May our prayers first begin
with ourselves as recipients of the power of
immeasurable light-life.
We deplore and lament our own
stubborn and atrocious capacity to do
great and grave harm to others in the
name of freedom, democracy, and
human rights.
As we are, filled with deceit and
arrogance, we are grasped by
inconceivable benevolence and love,
unattainable from the standpoint of our
arrogance, pride and delusion.
Inexpressible compassion is directed to
us who have waged and reveled in war
and bloodshed since time immemorial.
The nameless name which calls and
embraces without fail is
Namo Amida Butsu.
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